Arielle Ford: Secrets to Attract Your Soulmate

Posted on by Tammy

Have you ever wondered what it takes to find the love of your life? Is it your dream to find a life-partner who will love, cherish and adore you?

Arielle Ford, bestselling author of “The Soulmate Secret,” has been called, “The Cupid of Consciousness” and “The Fairy Godmother of Love,” and she joined Elevated Existence Magazine founder, Tammy Mastroberte, as part of the Living an Elevated Existence Mind, Body & Soul Summit to discuss how to attract a soulmate using the tools and techniques she herself applied to attract her husband, Brian, at age 44.

“For me, a soulmate is first and foremost somebody you can completely be yourself with, and somebody who you share unconditional love, and when you look into each other’s eyes, you feel like you are coming home . . . it can be a lover, parents, kids, business partners, co-workers, and even your cats and dogs fit into that,” Ford shared on the call.

But when it comes to romantic love, the fastest way to manifest it is to start being grateful for the soulmates we already have in life, such as family and friends, and to understand there is no such thing as only one soulmate.

“I don’t know who started the big fat lie that we only get one love in a lifetime. I know one woman who is married to her third soulmate because she outlived the first two,” Ford explained. She also pointed out there are 7.2 billion people alive on the plant and approximately half of them are single, so statistically we can’t not meet our soulmate!

Ford woke up one day at 43 years old and realized she forgot to get married, she explained. She had worked hard on her career and loved her life, but her bed was empty and she knew something was missing. Upon looking at her life and how well she had done in her career, she got the idea of using the same techniques – special prayers, rituals, intentions – to find love. Within six months she met her husband Brian during a business meeting, and three weeks later she was engaged.

“As soon as Brian and I got together, I suddenly became the poster child for women over 40 to fall in love,” she said, explaining she would share the soulmate secret process with people watch them having amazing success. Even her 80-year-old mother-in-law used it to find new love!

“I shared it with my mother-in-law and within three weeks she had a date, which led to her being with her next soulmate,” Ford said. “This has worked for men and women in over 40 countries around the world, and I get emails every single day from people about finding love. It works if you are wiling to put a little time into it.”

If we got fired from our job, we would know exactly what to do to get another one, said Ford. We would update our resume, go online to look for work, network with people and go on job interviews. We would take action, and we need to do the same with our love life.

“What happens, particularly with women, is if they have to find a job or a new car or a place to live, they go into action, but when it comes to their love life, they kind of lean back on the couch and say, ‘well, if it’s meant to be it will happen.’ You would never do that about a job,” Ford noted. “Not only are you looking for your soulmate, but your soulmate is also looking for you. But they can’t find you if your not leaving the house, or if your not online, or if your not in the game. It’s your job to put yourself in the game – that is the first thing that has to happen.”

Steps for Manifesting a Soulmate
Ford shared her key steps to manifesting love – steps she followed herself and has taught to people all over the world.

Step 1: Forgiveness — The first step is all about forgiveness, especially forgiving ourselves for any judgments we placed on ourselves for not doing the right thing in past relationships. But we also need to forgive others we think have done us wrong. This step is about also clearing out the emotional blocks we carry from the past.

Step 2: Clarity – We need to uncover and get clear about the traits we want in our soulmate, and not jut the physical appearance, but the heart traits, said Ford.

“You want to be looking for things that are going to contribute to your long-term happiness,” she said. “Most people are clear about what they don’t want and not clear about what they do want, so they can start with the ‘don’t want’ list and then turn that into what they do want.”

We should start by looking at the last two or three relationships and list all the things we don’t want in a person, such as lying, cheating and smoking. Then write a list of things we do want, such as loyal, kind, generous, monogamous, and puts my needs first.

“Having this clarity is really critical, and in some ways the hardest because it requires the most time to really ponder and think about,” said Ford. “Then once you do that, you write out your soulmate wish list all in positive statements.”

This is also when we can add some physical qualities we would like our soulmate to have, such as gray hair – something Ford had on her list and actually found in her husband Brian.

“I also had on my list that English would be a first language because I had dated a lot of foreigners and even thought they spoke English it’s different from having it as a first language,” she said. “I also wanted somebody who could walk unassisted because I like to go for walks every single day, so it was a mix of heart traits and physical qualities.”

Know what your ‘must have’s are,’ she explained. We don’t always get everything we want, but be specific on the things most important to you. After you have the list, give it to a trusted friend to make sure you have not missed anything important.

“For example, I’m a big cat lover, and I always have been, but I once dated a guy who is allergic to cats and the first time he came to my condo he started coughing, sneezing and chocking. So a cat lover was on my list,” she shared.

Step 3: Release Ceremony – We need to release the list to the universe, and while we can keep a copy, we should not be obsessive about it or checking it every day, said Ford. For her release ceremony she looked on the calendar for the next new moon, and she wrote out her list on a beautiful piece of stationary, and took it to the cove near her home at noon. She read through the list, said a prayer of gratitude to thank the universe for sending her the perfect and right partner, and then burned the list and tossed it into the ocean. Then she took herself out to lunch, ordered a glass of champagne and toasted her soulmate.

“I said, ‘wherever you are right now, just know that the cosmic welcome mat has been put out for you, and I’m ready whenever you are,’” she explained.

Some of the things we can do with our list include:

— put it above or below an altar

— put in under our pillow or a mattress

–put it in our favorite spiritual book

–roll it up into a scroll, put it into a red or pink helium balloon and release it into the heavens

“The point is just to let it go,” she noted. “Of course, keep a copy. Three years after Brian and I were married, he came running down the stairs holding this beat up yellow legal pad, and he was saying, ‘I found your list, your soulmate wish list, and I’m everything but two.’”

Feathering the Nest
It’s important to get into the state of the mind where our soulmate is already with us – even before he or she arrives, and Ford calls this “feathering the nest.” It starts with literally preparing our home energetically to receive our soulmate.

“If you were living with an ex, or they spent time there, even though they are not physically there anymore, they have left invisible energy that you need to clear out,” she explained.

There are several ways to do this. Here are a few of her suggestions:

— Hire a professional energy worker or feng shui expert

— Buy white sage and burn it over a bowl while walking around the house. Pay special attention to the window jams, door jams and inside the closets.

— Open all the windows and doors on a nice sunny day, and take a broom in your hand. Using your imagination, literally sweep the other person’s energy out of the doors and windows of your home.

Additionally, if there are photographs, souvenirs, or momentos of things that are from an ex, they should be removed from the home. Even if we are not conscious of them, they are having an unconscious effect tying us to the person and our past. We can get rid of it, or at least put it in the garage. If we don’t have a garage, give it to a friend to store for us.

“I was talking to a friend of mine who is a well known tapping expert,” said Ford. “He was recovering from a breakup and tapping about it, but he still was not meeting anyone. I had a conversation with him and he found photos of his ex in the home. He got rid of them and then two days later he met the women he is now married to. This stuff is really important to do, and it really works.”

It is also important to physically make room for our soulmate in our home. Even if we live in a very small apartment, it is showing a sign of faith to make room for them. This can be an empty drawer in the dresser, half of a shelf in the bathroom, or an inch of space in the closet, she said.

“If you are living in a bigger place and have two car garage, park on your side of the garage and not in the middle. If you have a bigger bed, sleep on one side and not in the middle,” she noted. “Start to symbolically show the universe you literally have room in your home for another.”

We can also do this with our time, and start scheduling time in to spend with our soulmate. For example, block out three hours on a Thursday night. If that time comes and your soulmate is not there, then go out and get a manicure, or go to the movies with a friend, said Ford. But actually put it into your schedule.

“I call this ‘living as if,’ when you’re ‘living as if’ you are knowing and trusting what you’ve asked for is already yours and your behavior is following your beliefs,” she said. “One of the things I did when I was manifesting my soulmate was every time I passed a card store I went in and bought birthday cards, anniversary cards, I Love You Just Because cards, Valentine’s Day cards – I had dozens of cards, all of which Brian now has because I knew that someday I would be giving it to him. So it wasn’t like I was waiting for the soulmate to buy the cards. I was anticipating and trusting that the soulmate was on the way.”

She told the story about a Hollywood actress who loved to cook, and every night she would come home from the set of her TV show and set the table for two. The woman would use the good China and silver, and have flowers, candles and music. She would make a delicious dinner, and by the end of six months, her soulmate was there at the table with her.

“We can’t see gravity, but we know it’s there, and it’s is the same thing with the law of attraction. It’s working all the time whether or not you believe it, whether or not you are using it in your favor,” Ford explained. “The law of attraction states, we draw to us the people, places and experiences that match our state of being, so if our state of being is –‘I am so lovable. I am so grateful for all the love in my life.’ – you will have one experience. If it’s, ‘I’m such a loser, nobody will love me, I’m too old, I’m too fat, I’m too broke,’ the experience you are going to have will be that.”

Julie Daniluk: How Food Can Heal Chronic Inflammation

Posted on by Tammy

Did you know things like white sugar, harmful fats and processed foods contribute to inflammation in the body, and that by eating the right anti-inflammatory foods, we can quell this internal heat?

As the bestselling author of “Meals That Heal Inflammation,” and co-host of the OWN Network’s Healthy Gourmet, Julie Daniluk RHN, NNCP, has helped thousands of people enjoy allergy-free foods that taste great and assist the body in the healing process, and she joined Elevated Existence Magazine founder, Tammy Mastroberte, on the Living an Elevated Existence Mind, Body & Soul Summit to discuss the benefits of an anti-inflammatory diet.

Her anti-inflammatory diet journey started following a trip to a small island in Thailand where she ate pad thai and ended up with severe food poisoning. She was taken to the nurses station, and they gave her antibiotics in order to save her life, but the lining of her gut was “destroyed” after it, and she “couldn’t eat anything without pain,” she said on the call.

She eventually started writing down foods she could eat that didn’t cause her harm, like squash and pureed spinach soup with hemp seeds, and this eventually grew into her book “Meals that Heal Inflammation.”

“I realized inflammation is so much broader then just digestive inflammation or that twisted ankle. It’s actually the background of almost every disease state on the entire planet,” she said. “Anything with the ending ‘itis’ is inflammation, as well as heart disease or Alzheimer’s. I really started to be passionate and to research it. That is how I wrote the front of the book, which is a scientific look at inflammation.”

Inflammation is actually a normal response the body has – it’s the body’s emergency response system or healing response, Daniluk shared.

“Without the trigger to the immune system to cause the heat, the swelling, the pain, an all those symptoms you are having, we would not be alerted to the fact that there is something terribly wrong,” she explained. “It’s jus the dashboard light going off, telling you the engine needs repair, and it’s important you notice it.”

To listen to Julie’s interview, along with 26 other top authors sign up for the FREE summit now!

Inflammation Root Causes
Daniluk explained there are four main causes of inflammation in the body, all starting with the letter “I”:

Injury – This can be both a physical injury and an emotional injury, such as a loved one dies too early, or the loss of a job at a crucial point where it is really needed, said Daniluk.

“Those emotional traumas have a massive impact to our physiology,” she said. “Physical injury we except, but the emotional injury is harder to look at, and if we are willing to poke at those places that are really tender, where we just want to store it away under the carpet and forget about it, then we really do resolve pain.”

Infection – This is the leading cause of inflammation, including infections in the gums causing heart disease; infections like genital warts causing cervical cancer; the virus we get from cold sores, which expedites the amount of Alzheimer’s plaque on the brain; and Epstein Barr, which is a virus that can trigger chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia.

“We point fingers at fibromyalgia saying, ‘I have muscle pain,’ but we have to resolve the fact that your immune system didn’t set off a terrible virus,” she noted.

We need to give the body the nutrients needed to balance the immune system, which Daniluk explains in her book. One of the greatest things is plant sterols, which is a fatty substance in plants that helps balance the immune system, she said.

Imbalance – This can be an imbalance in hormones or nutrition, which go hand-in-hand, Daniluk noted. For example, PMS caould be caused by a deficiency of vitamin B6, which is causing a hormonal imbalance.

Irritation – Often caused by toxins from what we are eating and the allergies we are consuming. She described an irritant as something that should not be a trigger for someone, but triggers the immune system response. Also, there are many toxins in the environment we can’t get away from, and they build up in the body causing a hormonal imbalance. Once example is dry cleaning fluid, which is a “massive hormone disrupter,” she said. “It throws off your estrogen to the point that you have a massive inflammation response.”

Signs of Inflammation
While some inflammation causes pain and swelling, like a broken bone, many people have hidden inflammation that is not painful, such as heart disease. But the major signs are swelling, heat, redness and loss of function, said Daniluk.

“Loss of function is the most important silent symptom we have to be aware of, and some people say it’s just a sign of aging, but I don’t agree,” she explained. “Why are people in Tibet living to 100 clear-headed with no Alzheimer’s at all. We can live full, vital lives without inflammation and then die peacefully in our sleep. It is possible.”

Once a person hits full vitality, all of the symptoms will be absent. They will have clear skin, a working digestion and no fatigue, to name a few things.

“Write a laundry list of symptoms that you have – a fungal infection on your toe; a creaky knee that is bothering you; rosacea on your skin; eczema on your elbow – all of those are inflammation, and if we address the little symptoms as they occur then we don’t have to listen to the screams of inflammation as we get older,” she explained on today’s call. “People who have serious inflammation in their 60’s had the evidence of inflammation in their 20’s and 30’s.”

Allergies are also a sign of inflammation, where the immune system overreacts to environmental allergens such as pollen, and the anti-inflammatory diet can help in this are as well, said Daniluk.

“It’s a harmless little piece of pollen. Other people breath it in, and it doesn’t cause them any harm, but some people breath it in, and its is causing a massive release of histamine. Histamine is the body is a messenger of inflammation. It causes the swelling, redness and pain, and that is why the immune system overreacts,” she said. “We don’t have to take immune suppressant drugs. We can reduce the amount of allergies in our environment by changing our diet. I had one client who was severely allergic to ragweed and could barely function. She was knocked up on drugs and couldn’t think clearly. After being on the anti-inflammatory diet for three months, her environmental allergies went through the floor, and she could completely function without having to take antihistamine drugs.”

Anti-Inflammatory Diet
Healing inflammation starts with the gut because the gut has a domino effect on the rest of the body, said Daniluk. In fact, 70 percent of our nerve endings are wired directly to our gut lining, and one in four people have some type of digestive complaint.

“The equivalent of a cat-sized brain is wired all along your digestive system. If we can heal that, then it will translate into a balanced immune system and repair mechanism of the entire body,” she explained. “If we eat a piece of organic salmon or wild arctic salmon, we have the proteins brush up against the wall of the bowel, and will trigger a positive response in the joint tissue. The omega 3’s in fish trigger an anti-inflammatory response that goes directly to the knees.”

The most inflammatory foods are:

Deep Fried Potato Chips – One in 10 people are sensitive to an alkaloid in potatoes, and with chips we drop it into boiling oil at 400 degrees, and this triggers an inflammatory substance in the body. Not only that, but the oil itself is inflammatory and toxic because it is so highly heated that massive amounts of oxygen molecules are attracted to it causing free radicals in the body that cause conflict in the joints, bowels and muscles, said Daniluk.

French Fries – Same as above.

Deep Fried Corn Chips – “Deep fried corn is very inflammatory, but also Doritos have crazy flavorings on it like red dye and the artificial dye is actually extracted from cold tar. People don’t realize tar being a petrochemical is toxic to the brain, causing brain inflammation, which triggers depression, memory loss and ADD,” she said.

Refined Wheat Flour – This is not only higher on the sugar scale then table sugar, but it contains gluten, which can cause pain and inflammation in muscles and joints if a person is sensitive to it, Daniluk explained. “One in three people hold the gene to be sensitive to it. If you are sensitive and have an emotional trauma, all of the sudden you can start reacting to wheat.”

Sugar – New studies show sugar causes heart disease more than fat or stress, she noted.

When it comes to meat, Daniluk said it depends on how it is cooked. She went back to eating meat when she became allergic to everything, including dairy, corn, gluten, legumes, nuts, fish and poultry. She realized having pureed soup that had ground chicken it is helped her. She recovered from her bowel inflammation within two years.

“If you grill meat it becomes inflammatory, so don’t grill or fry it, but you can have small pieces of organic, ethically raised, local meat from a small farm boiled in soup,” she said.

Some of the most anti-inflammatory foods are:

Dark Leafy Green Vegetables – Eating these vegetable from the cruciferous family of plants, such as broccoli, kale and cabbage are master healers, containing huge amounts of anti-inflammatory phytonutrients that quell inflammation quickly, Daniluk shared. For those who have hypo thyroid, it is better to cook then eat raw, because raw could slow down the thyroid. But hyper thyroid would do find with raw.

Berries – Raspberries, Blackberries, Goji berries, Camu Camu, Acai Berries, and even frozen blueberries.

Small, Sustainable Fish — Artic char, which is similar to salmon is very high in special peptides that heal the whole body and great for the omega 3’s, she noted. “Rapid healing starts with high omega 3 foods, so go for small fish. One of the best fish for healing fibromyalgia pain is halibut because of the need for malic acid with fibromyalgia.

Seeds – They are more nutritious then nuts and don’t have the same allergic reactions, said Daniluk. They are high in protein and Omega 3’s. These include flax seed, chia seeds and hemp seeds, and hemp seeds have Omega 3, magnesium, zinc and iron, which are all needed to heal inflammation. She recommends sprinkling on salads.

Marilyn Alauria: Connecting With Your Guides, Angels & Ascended Masters

Posted on by Tammy

We are all born with intuition or what is sometimes called a gut instinct, and with the right tools, we can learn to develop our intuition, which can really help us navigate our lives.

Internationally known psychic medium Marilyn Alauria joined Elevated Existence Magazine founder, Tammy Mastroberte, as part of the “Living an Elevated Existence Mind, Body & Soul Summit,” to explain how we can access our guides, angels and more by balancing the chakras.

“I want everybody on this call to know that whether you feel like you didn’t have gifts at 5, 10 or 15, you can develop gifts at 25, 35 or 75. What you are doing is waking up to your natural essence,” Alauria said on the live call.

She inherited her psychic gifts from her grandmother and has been having psychic experiences since the age of five. When she first began studying and giving readings, she didn’t know a lot about the chakra system or how to open them. But after being introduced to them by her guides, she saw a huge difference in herself and her readings.

“My readings got even stronger, but what also got stronger was my consciousness about myself, and my sitting in my soul got stronger because each chakra really helps us to become one with ourselves,” she explained to listeners.

Each chakra has a gift, whether psychic or emotional, and they are all important because they all effect our consciousness, and our ability to access our intuition and the messages sent to us from our guides, angels, and even our loved ones who have passed.

“Each one has a gift . . . being clairvoyant, which is seeing, or claircognizant, which is knowing, is also about being conscious, and you have to be conscious and awake to recognize the signs your guides, the universe and angels are bringing to you. Unless these chakras are balanced and opened up, you are not seeing it. You’re missing it,” Alauria said.

She also cautioned not to wait for an earth shattering moment from our guides or angels. They often connect with us in subtle ways that at first may seem like a coincidence.

“Your guides are talking to you every day, but we are all expecting a being coming over and shining green lights into our apartment, and our apartment shaking, and it doesn’t work that way all the time,” she noted.

To listen to Marilyn’s interview, along with 25 other top mind, body & spirit experts, sign up for the Living an Elevated Existence Summit FREE!

Chakra Gifts
Alauria walked listeners through each chakra and the gifts contained with them on the call, explaining each chakra connects to different guides, angels and ascended masters.

1^st Chakra – This is connected with safety, material instincts and living in the world, said Alauria. “When you are psychic you can get very spacy. I used to walk into things, break things and constantly fall, and it’s because I wasn’t grounded. It’s extremely important that you ground into the earth and you feel safe in the work,” she said.

To ground ourselves, we can go outside and put our feet in the grass, touch a tree or eat root vegetables. Also, chocolate and peanut butter are very grounding. For those who work in an office building, simply finding a window and looking outside at a tree to bring the essence of the tree in can ground a person, Alauria shared.

“You can also bring attention to your first chakra and picture a colored light going from first chakra down to the center of mother earth,” she explained on the call. “Allow that colored light to become something very strong like a tree trunk or cement pole, and write a word on it that helps you to feel safe. This can be a name, your animals name or religious name. Fell the end of the pole getting roots and grounding even further.”

2^nd Chakra – Representing creativity, Alauria teaches psychic ability runs in alignment with imagination, and many get confused if a message is in their imagination or their guides. “I just say go with it at first because you will learn the difference,” she noted. “You will start learning the energy from your guides versus your imagination.”

3^rd Chakra – This is above the navel and is the color yellow. It is where our clairsentience comes from – where our gut instinct or intuition lives.

4^th Chakra – The heart chakra is where our empathic abilities come from – or our ability to feel the emotions of others. “It’s picking up people’s energy and emotions and its green,” said Alauria.

5^th Chakra – The throat chakra is usually represented by sky blue, and is where our clairaudience or psychic hearing is from. It’s also about speaking our truth to ourselves.

6^th Chakra – This is known as the third-eye chakra, and is the color indigo. There is where clairvoyance or seeing comes from.

“We all have it,” she noted. “Our guides speak to us in symbols, and even everything you dream about has a symbolic meaning. If you are out and about, and you keep seeing bees everywhere you go, don’t take for granted it’s bee season. They are there for a reason, and they are communicating something to you. You can go and look up the meaning of bees and see what it is the universe is trying to tell you. For me, bees represent creativity, so maybe you are opening up to creativity. Or you are not living enough in the honey or nectar of life.”

7^th Chakra – The crown chakra is white with lavender specks, said Alauria, and connects us with our guides and angels.

Opening & Balancing Chakras
If a chakra is shut down or blocked, we have the ability to work with it and open it back up. Alauria views each chakra as a room with four walls, a ceiling and a floor.

“When working with a particular one, we can wake up in the morning and begin paying attention to it right away,” she said. “If it’s the throat chakra, I would paint the walls of the room or chakra with a light blue color. The throat is clairaudience and thoughts, so I would say pay attention to the thoughts you are having in the morning. You would be amazing what your thoughts are when you first wake up in the morning. Paint the walls blue, and write vibrant words and your name on the walls. You can even vacuum the blocks to get rid of them. If you work with one chakra for three weeks like that, it will start clearing. And the process doesn’t have to take long.”

When it comes to balancing the chakras, Alauria does it every day before her morning meditation. She balances them and releases anything she may be struggling with at the time, which may be keeping her from her true self or her fullest expression of herself, she said.

“I don’t need to know what it is. I’ll say to my guides, ‘Please release me from anything that is keeping me from being the fullest expression of myself, from living in truth, being an authentic medium and really being with my true gift,’” she noted. “I’ll release it and then I open my chakras and balance the energy. I invite the God inside of me and the God outside of me, and all my guides and angels and the light in. I open up into the gifts, and I ask that my consciousness in those gifts open up to the highest level. It takes less then five minutes.”

Protection
The energy coming from our angels and guides is infinite, and we can always ask for their help and protection. They are never too busy or unavailable to us, according to Alauria.

“We can’t even understand what their energy is like. Our energy is in containers almost, but they’re not. Their energy can be everywhere at once. So know that their energy can always come in,” she said.

For protection, she calls in Archangel Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, and we can do the same. By surrounding ourselves with their loving energy, we can ask what color we need for protection, and take it around our body, extending out six inches or more until we feel safe and not suffocated, she said.

“There are many ways you can protect yourself, but the main thing is that you always have free will, so if there is some negative energy around you, you have free will to say you will not allow that to effect you,” she noted. “I surround myself with angels, Jesus, Mary, Joseph and God. I ask the archangels to cut the cords of any negative situations attached to me, and I ask Archangel Michael to throw a platinum net around my body to remove anything that got stuck, and to get rid of it.”

Melissa Costello: Eating to Create Your Healthiest Body, Mind & Spirit

Posted on by Tammy

We continue to hear the benefits of plant-based eating — touted by well-known doctors such as Dr. Oz, Dr. Andrew Weil, Dr. Mark Hyman and Dr. Joel Furhman — but what exactly IS a plant-based diet, and does it require a lot of time for preparation and cooking?

Certified nutritionist and author of “The Karma Chow Ultimate Cookbook: 125+ Plant Based Vegan Recipes for a Fit, Happy & Healthy You,” Melissa Costello joined Elevated Existence Magazine founder, Tammy Mastroberte, on the Living an Elevated Existence Mind, Body & Soul Summit to discuss this topic and more!

“Plant based eating is coming more into the mainstream, and often another term for veganism, but it doesn’t mean your vegan,” Costello said on the call. “It’s just that you are eating more foods that are less processed, so you are eating things that grow in the ground or on a tree — things that are more natural. It’s about eating less animal products and more natural foods like vegetables, beans, whole grains, nuts, seeds and fruits.”

As the founder of KarmaChow.com, Costello creates recipes that are easy to follow with ingredients easy to acquire at the local grocery store. Her goal is to make eating healthy easy and accessible for everyone, she said.

“I really want people to know this way of eating can taste good, and be accessible and simple because we are busy today, and people are always on the go,” she explained. “I wanted people to know they can eat healthy, and it doesn’t have to take five hours to make one dish. It’s really about using things that are accessible at a grocery store.”

As a child, Costello suffered from asthma, migraine headaches, and often found herself sick with viruses and bacterial infections. At 19 she began investigating food as medicine and changing her diet in order to heal her body.

“I had always loved to cook, so I just started experimenting with how could I eat healthier. I started making healthier versions foods that I loved,” she noted. “I also had a major sugar addiction, and most of our health issues are related to that because sugar wrecks our immune system.”

She found when she started moving to a more plant-based diet, her body began to heal itself. Her asthma went away, along with her headaches and irritable bowel syndrome.

“Between eating super healthy, exercising and stress management, all of those things went away, which was a miracle and phenomenal, but that is the power of eating clean healthy food,” Costello said.

To get a better idea of how our food has a major effect on our bodies, Costello recommended the film “Forks Over Knives,” created by two heart surgeons who began to investigate the connection between food and illness, and who now recommend plant-based diets to their patients.

“They were tired of doing all these triple bypass surgeries and thought, ‘What can we do to start changing this?’” she explained. “They came up with this plant based idea and started putting people through it. People can heal themselves of hear disease, Type 2 Diabetes and more. When we start changing our diet, our bodies have their own natural internal healing processes. When we put the good clean food in, our bodies will start to heal.”

Substitutions & More
On the live call during the Living an Elevated Existence Summit, Costello shared what she uses for substitutions when it comes to sugar, meat and more. When it comes to sugar, her go-to substitutes include raw, unfiltered honey; grade B maple syrup (which has less sugar then grade A through the processing); brown rice syrup (which is a lower glycemic sweetener); coconut palm sugar and stevia.

And when it comes to artificial sweeteners, Costello would prefer people eat actual sugar then use these alternatives, she explained.

“They are just pure chemicals. They have been proven in animal testing to affect the brain, and they cause tumor growth. They are just horrendous,” she said.

Also, for those who are addicted to sugar and find they crave it, she recommends grabbing and apple or making a cup of tea rather then reaching for the candy bar.

“Take a contrary action, and do something that is different then your norm. That is when you are going to start retraining your brain,” she said.

For meat substitutions, rather then buying what she refers to as “fake meat,” she uses healthier options such as tempeh, which is a soy-based, fermented food that is easy to digest.

“My fake tuna is made with chickpeas, so it’s not a processed meat product, and for tempeh I always use organic, non GMO. It gives you live enzymes.”

To substitute dairy, she uses almond milk, and even makes cheese out of cashew nuts. It’s about making small changes that add up in the long run, said Costello.

“You don’t’ have to say, ‘Tomorrow I’m giving up everything,’ because that will set us up for failure. Take one small step a week. Make one recipe each week that is vegan and healthy, or do Meatless Mondays,” she said.

Costello is currently working on a new cookbook due out in April 2014.

Vasavi Kumar: Going From Big Ideas to Realities that Serve the Soul

Posted on by Tammy

Vasavi Kumar is a certified coach, and co-author of the bestselling book, “Succeeding in Spite of Everything.” She has been described as “your kick-in-the-pants en route to your desired destination,” and when she spoke live on “Living an Elevated Existence Mind, Body & Soul Summit,” a three-month long telesummit produced by Elevated Existence Magazine, she didn’t disappoint.

Kumar shared how she grew up in a traditional Indian family and in her college years suffered from drug and alcohol addiction – eventually diagnosed with bipolar disorder. But she never let these obstacles stop her on her path to finding freedom.

Listen to Vasavi Kumar’s Interview & Sign Up for the Summit Free!

“My purpose here on earth is to share my story in such a way that impacts people so that they can understand they can have anything they want – you may not get everything that you want, but you can have anything that you want – and you have to be willing to take action to do that,” she told listeners.

Many of us have goals and dreams, but we get stuck in the web of fear and doubt, and become overwhelmed by the circumstances surrounding us. But Kumar explained if we want to find true freedom, taking action despite the fear or obstacles is the only course of action.

“If you want to have freedom in your life you have to be willing to take action and go get it. Action really is the antidote to your suffering,” she shared. “Your freedom is going to come when you are scared and thinking ‘I can’t do this.’ It’s when you’re scared and you are willing to do it anyway. It really is about taking risks and realizing that whatever it is you are meant to do boils down to you being willing to do whatever you need to do to make it happen.”

We all have obstacles in our lives, and we can either believe they are obstacles or believe they are part of the lessons in life we are meant to learn from – the choice is ours.

“I believe that God, your higher power, doesn’t give you things you can’t handle,” said Kumar. “Every action that I take, I ask ‘Is this going to move me forward as far as serving the world, or is this keeping me where I am, or is this making me go backwards.’”

Sign up to the FREE summit “Living an Elevated Existence” NOW!

Moving Beyond Fear
Fear is normal, Kumar told the audience on the call. Everybody feels fear. The key is to not allow it to dominate us, and stop us from moving forward in life.

“The misconception is ‘I can’t take action if I’m afraid.’ No. Incorrect. The two can co-exist,” she said. “You can be afraid and you can take action. In fact, more often then not, you’re going to be scared. Any time you do something scary, or that is calling you to be a bigger, higher version of yourself, you are going to be scared. Now you can use that fear as an obstacle for yourself, or you can say, ‘O.K, that’s cool. I’m scared, and I’m going to do it anyway.’”

During the call she shared her four-step process for moving forward to a life of freedom. This includes:

1. Know Your Why — We need to know why we are doing whatever it is we are doing, or why we want to achieve the goal we set. “Get clear on your Why. Ask yourself, ‘Why do I want to do this?’” she shared.

2. Examine Your Beliefs — Look at the beliefs we have around the goal, and not the limiting or disempowering ones. “Ask yourself what you choose to believe about it? What do you want to believe? What is the belief you want to empower you? This is what I call faking it to make it,” she said.

3. Know What You Want — “What is it that you want? Do you want to write a book, pitch yourself to a network, or be in a relationship? Feel it, touch it, taste it and get so clear on it that you are actually in the picture inside your mine,” Kumar said.

4. Figure Out the How — This is the last thing we need to understand when trying to achieve a goal and move forward. However, many people start here rather then end up here, and that doesn’t work, said Kumar. We must get clear on the first three aspects before tackling the how if we want to succeed.

Sign Up FREE to hear 26 Top Experts & Get 4 Bonus Gifts Now!